Common Ground
by David Scriven
The oral history of my mother’s family has always intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about my French-Canadian ancestors who emigrated from Québec to Ontario in the mid-1800s. Fertile land was becoming scarce in Québec, and Ontario was encouraging settlement.
Very little was captured about their existence in an English-speaking, largely Protestant province. Other than a census every ten years, the Roman Catholic Church was the keeper of their records—lives condensed into lists of baptisms, marriages, and interments. After building up a family tree, I started my own journey to document the places where they lived. With a simple aspiration to live self-sufficiently, little evidence remained of their existence. Residences and resting places revealed dead ends and dog parks. As my journey continues, I am embracing being drawn to unknown places documenting the land that once held them and searching for whispers of what might remain of their lives.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Creator photo by Ivan Rupes
David Scriven is a lens-based emerging artist living in Toronto. Using cameras inherited from his father and grounded in documentary photography, his photographs have explored decay and renewal in the urban ecosystem. “Common Ground,” a new and ongoing project, grew out of ancestry research started during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has exhibited work at the MacKendrick Community Gallery, Artscape Youngplace, and Gallery 44 Centre of Contemporary Photography in Toronto, as well as ViewPoint Gallery in Halifax. In November 2021, he self-published a photo book entitled Alexandra Park that captured a year in the complete demolition and rebuild of the Toronto west-end community housing project. @davidalbertscriven on Instagram. Website: davidscrivenphotography.com.